Getting Connected

ThingsBoard exposes an HTTP/HTTPS API for devices to publish telemetry, sync attributes, and exchange RPC commands. Any HTTP client — curl, an SDK library, or a language’s built-in HTTP stack — can connect without a specialized broker library.

Connection Parameters

Parameter	Value
Host	Your ThingsBoard hostname or IP
Port	`80` (HTTP) · `443` (HTTPS)
Protocol	HTTP/1.1
Authentication	Access token in the URL path

Authentication

HTTP uses access token credentials. Include the token as a path segment in every request URL:

http(s)://THINGSBOARD_HOST/api/v1/$ACCESS_TOKEN/{resource}

Copy the access token from Entities → Devices → [device] → Copy Access Token. See Devices for how to manage device credentials.

Where {resource} defines the endpoint type for your request. The available resources are:

telemetry — for sending telemetry data;
attributes — for publishing or requesting client/shared attributes;
rpc — for sending or replying to RPC commands;
claiming — for initiating the device claiming process.

HTTPS (TLS)

Most deployments terminate TLS at a load balancer or reverse proxy (HAProxy, nginx, AWS ALB). The platform receives plain HTTP traffic internally.

To enable HTTPS directly on the ThingsBoard server, set these environment variables:

SSL_ENABLED=true
SSL_CREDENTIALS_TYPE=PEM
SSL_PEM_CERT=server.pem
SSL_PEM_KEY=server_key.pem
SSL_PEM_KEY_PASSWORD=secret

Variable	Description
`SSL_ENABLED`	Enables or disables SSL support. Set to `true` to activate HTTPS.
`SSL_CREDENTIALS_TYPE`	Credential format: `PEM` for certificate files, or `KEYSTORE` for a Java keystore.
`SSL_PEM_CERT`	Path to the server certificate file. The file may also include the private key.
`SSL_PEM_KEY`	Path to the private key file. Optional if the private key is already included in the certificate file.
`SSL_PEM_KEY_PASSWORD`	Password for an encrypted private key. Optional if the key is not password-protected.

When connecting over HTTPS with a CA-signed certificate, clients need no special configuration — just use https:// as the URL scheme. For self-signed certificates, pass --cacert ca.pem to curl.

Response Codes

Code	Meaning
`200 OK`	Client’s request has been successfully processed
`400 Bad Request`	Invalid URL, request parameters, or body
`401 Unauthorized`	Invalid or missing access token
`404 Not Found`	Requested resource does not exist
`405 Method Not Allowed`	URL doesn’t support this request method

Command-Line Tool

Examples throughout this section use curl, which is available by default on Linux, macOS, and Windows 10+. Verify with curl --version.

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